FAQ: ISPs

If the IP addresses assigned to your organisation have a status of "ASSIGNED PA" in the RIPE Database, they are Provider Aggregatable. That means you will not be able to take them with you when you change ISPs. Instead, you will have to renumber your network.

If the IP addresses assigned to your organisation have a status of "ASSIGNED PI" in the RIPE Database and the address space was assigned by the RIPE NCC, the IP addresses are Provider Independent. That means you can take them with you when you change ISPs.

If your LIR assigned address space to your organisation with "ASSIGNED PI" status, you might be able to take the IP addresses with you when changing ISPs. Please check with your LIR before you change ISPs.

The data in the RIPE Database is owned by the people who enter it and not by the RIPE NCC.

The RIPE NCC is not permitted to change user data.

There is a security mechanism called RPSS controlling the creation of route objects. RPSS is designed to stop the creation of route objects (amongst other things) without the agreement of the the person controlling the AS Number and the person controlling the IP addresses.

If the IP addresses and AS number are from different ISPs those ISPs will need to work together to create a route object for you.

The RIPE NCC is a Regional Internet Registry (RIR) providing global Internet resources and related services. We are not a regulator of the Internet community in our service region nor do we police the quality of service provided by ISPs in our service region. In situations where an LIR or Internet Service Provider (ISP) ceases operation our response is governed by the policies that are set by the RIPE community. These polices are detailed in the RIPE document "IPv4 Address Allocation and Assignment Policies in the RIPE NCC Service Region".

If the customer has PI addresses the assignment will remain valid providing the criteria for the original assignment are met.

Customers with PA addresses are recommended to obtain a new address space assignment from another LIR and return the PA address space that was assigned by their original LIR. In this way full use of aggregation is made. When a customer renumbers into an address allocation held by another LIR, their assignments can be routed as part of that LIRs allocation. At the same time the aggretability of the original LIRs allocated block is maintained.

It is the responsibility of an LIR to make it clear to their customers which type of address space is assigned to them.

The RIPE NCC will not change user data in the RIPE Database. If you have a maintainer object in the Database which you do not control, you will need to contact the RIPE Database Department who will guide you through the process of regaining control of the maintainer.

PA addresses are assigned from an LIR's allocation and are registered in the RIPE Database by the LIR. The advantage of PA addresses is that the routing information for many customers can be aggregated once it leaves the provider's routing domain.

PI address space is assigned separately and not from an LIR's PA allocation. All PI assignments are registered in the RIPE Database by the RIPE NCC at the time they are assigned. PI assignments are usually small; they cannot be aggregated into larger blocks. The disadvantage of this is that networks operators throughout the Internet may choose not to route them.

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